Wright Ad May Be Too Little, Too Late

By Matthew Mosk
The ads many Democrats feared would surface finally have -- tough attacks on Sen. Barack Obama for his association with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The commercials come straight to the point, describing Wright as someone who "raged against our country" while Obama stood by him and play recordings of Wright's most bombastic sermons. "Not God Bless America, God Damn America," he rails in video taken up in the ad. "US of KKKA!"

But the ads, paid for by the National Republican Trust political action committee, may be too little, in terms of the size of the ad buy, and come too late to have much of an impact, according to Evan Tracey, who analyzes political ads for the Campaign Media Analysis Group.

According to the latest figures from his group, the Republican Trust has not spent anywhere close to the $2 million-plus the group has claimed as the size of its ad buy. Tracey said the group spent $185,000 on Friday to air the commercial on CBS in Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and on cable. The buy was expanded over the weekend to include more time and additional media markets, costing the group an additional $430,000.

"This stuff is too little to land a real punch, and probably would be even if they had put $10 million behind it," Tracey said. "The problem for them was that the Wright card was played by the Clinton campaign. People have already digested that issue. If they wanted to use the Wright angle successfully, it probably needed to be a slow steady diet of ads from September to Election Day."

Tracey said the real impact of the ad will be to satisfy a faction of the Republican Party that felt the campaign had not done enough to raise questions about Obama's association with Wright. Doing so now "may fire up the base," Tracey said. "But there's not a lot of new information there."

What did Wright say before God damn america?
Was he talking about My Lai?
Was he talking about the assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark?
Maybe he was talking about Wallace or Connor.
I'm sure SAINT could tell us.

What can you expect from the lying, cheating, stealing Republicans? That they'll take a video from a house of worship, edit it out of context, and then use it to paint a good man as a devil.

You Republicans really ought to be ashamed of yourselves for being so sleazy that your party knows it can get away with stuff like that.

And the mainstream media that aids and abets the racist, reactionaries that the Republicans embrace so closely, you people really ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

If Wright and Obama were white, this wouldn't be an issue. The far right loonies have said all kinds of stuff and no one goes crazy about it.

Double standards in the press. I have to say it: the WaPo has, yet again, failed the character test by repeating the slanderous right wing propaganda about Obama, but not mentioning anything about McCain's dirty rotten Hensley-Marley-Lansky Arizona network.

Marley had Bolles killed. Hensley did time for Marley. (Not even Rehnquist could get him off that felony charge.) That's how they made their "liquor" fortune. That Phoenix/Vegas/LA network is dirty. Bonanno retired out there. (He had *political* protection.)

Clinton exhausted this issue. Who could forget the 24-7, month long, non-stop Rev. Wrigh loop on all media outlets? All of the juice has been squeezed from that lemon. Witch-gate got practically no airplay so Rev. Wright is no longer fair game. At this point who cares? Only the base.

I have an idea, Saint. Take a couple of powders and find a quiet place with a few bunny rabbits to keep you company, and talk to them. I understand that this has the very calming effect that you seem to need.